Texas Prison Break

By Preston Harper

Texas Prison Break is an action-packed mystery. Forrest Wilson, a Christian has returned to Fort Worth from Walter Reed Army Medical Center after partially recuperating from serious wounds sustained in Afghanistan. Right after his return he has a traumatic breakup with his fiance, Elizabeth Young, in her apartment and then has a one-car accident two hours later, leaving him with dissociate amnesia. Although Elizabeth is alive when he leaves her, an unknown assailant kills her, leaving no incriminating evidence behind. A month later a grand jury indicts Wilson for Elizabeths murder. In his unstable condition he pleads guilty and receives a 20-year sentence. In prison he regains his memory and draws close to God. After he has been in prison three years, Elizabeths sister, Mary, tells him she has discovered new evidence that might help him find her sisters killer. To protect her and the new evidence, Forrest decides to break out of prison. During his adventures in the free world he encounters and helps several other Christians that are in different kinds of prisons from the one he has left.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: May 15, 2015
• ISBN: 9781503566507

Preston Harper

Born and raised in Austin Texas, Preston Harper served eight years in U.S. Army Intelligence. He has an MA from The University of Texas in Austin and a PhD from Texas Christian University in Fort Worth. He has taught American literature at Abilene Christian University for over twenty-five years. Besides Texas Prison Break he has written a translation of Beowulf and five novels: Warlords of the West: A Story of the Comanches, The Good Fight, A Small Deception, Reasons to Live, Reasons to Die, and They Wanted Justice. He has also written over 100 academic articles and reviews. He and his wife, Marsha live in Abilene, Texas. They have three children.

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Copyright © 2015 by Preston Harper.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Rev. date: 05/13/2015

Contents

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty-One

Chapter Twenty-Two

Chapter Twenty-Three

Chapter Twenty-Four

Chapter Twenty-Five

Chapter Twenty-Six

Chapter Twenty-Seven

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Chapter Twenty-Nine

Chapter Thirty

Chapter Thirty-One

Chapter Thirty-Two

Chapter Thirty-Three

Chapter Thirty-Four

Chapter Thirty-Five

Chapter Thirty-Six

Chapter Thirty-Seven

Chapter Thirty-Eight

Chapter Thirty-Nine

Chapter Forty

Chapter Forty-One

Chapter Forty-Two

For The Innocent Prisoners

CHAPTER ONE

BREAK Thursday 1

F orrest Wilson sat at a four-foot-square metal table in the recreation room of the George N. Turner Unit in Haven County, Texas. The other prisoners were watching Mission Impossible III on TV or playing cards and dominoes. He was mulling over a surprise letter from Mary Young, mailed from Las Piedras, Texas two days earlier. He had been in prison for over three years, and this was the first letter he had received from the older sister of Elizabeth, his dead fiancée, whom he had confessed to murdering. Although Mary had become a good friend while Elizabeth and he were courting, he had thought she was still harboring ill feelings toward him despite his long letter the year before, explaining what really happened the night of Elizabeth’s death. In this letter from Mary, however, she said she had thought and prayed about his letter and now believed he was innocent. Moreover, she believed God had led her to something Elizabeth had left behind that might be useful in proving his innocence. When she had studied it carefully, she planned to share it with him. Forrest was excited about the discovery and at the same time fearful that knowledge of it by the wrong person might get Mary killed. On top of that her killer could possibly find the new information and destroy it. What should he do? He was unable to get her phone number, and he didn’t want to risk sending a return letter through prison-censored mail.

He leaned back in his chair and thought about the two sisters. Although Mary was pretty like her sister, the resemblance ended there. Mary was a curvy five-foot eight with brown eyes and brown hair. Elizabeth was a slim five-foot-four with blue eyes and blond hair. She was a dedicated vegetarian, and she preferred playing sports or working out in Gold’s Gym to reading a book, even a very good book. Mary ate all kinds of food and exercised regularly, but she preferred reading a good book. Though she liked to be with other people, she dated only occasionally. Five years earlier her young fiancé, Dr. Levi Chase, an English instructor at Las Piedras College, was killed in a collision with a drunk driver who was coming up an exit from I-35. Dr. Chase was on his way home after presenting a paper at a conference in Austin. His senseless death devastated her, and made it understandably difficult for her even to consider having a permanent romantic relationship with anybody.

When Forrest first met Mary, she was a senior secondary education major at Harding University, a fundamentalist school that required her to attend daily chapel and take a Bible study course every semester. He and Elizabeth were freshmen at TCU, which required no Bible study courses and no chapel attendance. He was 22 years old, having pitched a year each with three minor league baseball teams after graduating from high school. His big break had come when he was invited to Tampa Bay’s spring training camp because of his 1.95 ERA and 10-1 won-loss record with his third minor league team. He missed this opportunity to play big-league ball because he had damaged his pitching arm. Inspired by the successful surgery of other pitchers with the same injury, he underwent Tommy John surgery and worked hard at rehabilitating his arm afterward. Unfortunately he was unable to recover the necessary velocity to pitch even in AAA ball, so he decided to go to college on an ROTC scholarship and major in health and fitness with a minor in theology. Elizabeth enrolled the same year. She had a computer science major and a minor in theology. They started dating at the end of the spring semester. After their sophomore year she dropped out of the ROTC program because she started attending a non-denominational church that was against Christians serving in the military.

Since he had stopped going to one of Fort Worth’s largest fundamentalist churches because he objected to some of its doctrines, he attended Sunday services with her. Those services did not prevent their spending Saturday afternoons together on tennis courts or golf courses and the nights together in bed. To his dismay, after a year and a half of his going to church with her, the passionate nights became mostly platonic evenings, as she became increasingly dedicated to developing her spiritual life. She also began moderating or abstaining from all fleshly appetites, and if she yielded to temptation and ate a slab of chocolate cake with ice cream for dessert at lunch, she would go for a two-mile run followed by a salad supper. The last time she yielded to his advances and slept with him was three months before he graduated. She avoided him for a week afterward while she went on a semi-fast and prayed fervently for God’s forgiveness.

Even though Forrest didn’t share Elizabeth’s growing religious fervor, she said she still loved him and wanted to marry him. He was surprised and suspected she thought she could save his soul if she married him. Nevertheless he was fond of her and consented, not because he wanted to marry her, but because he was expecting to be deployed to Afghanistan soon after he graduated. She was three years younger than he and hadn’t been out in the world, so he figured her religious fervor was a phase she would grow out of as she waited for his return. Even if she didn’t grow out of it, he would have a fiancée to write to, talk to, and come home to. After that, he thought he might get her to refocus some of her desire for pleasing God in church to a desire for pleasing him everywhere else.

As it turned out, enemy bullets in his left leg and his lower back ended his tour in Afghanistan. He sustained the wounds while rescuing six men in his infantry company that were pinned down by enemy machinegun fire. He lost a kidney, some mobility in his leg, and a lot of weight while at Walter Reed Army Medical Center. He received a Purple Heart, a Silver Star, a medical discharge, and partial disability compensation. When he returned to Fort Worth, Elizabeth had graduated and was working for a tax-exempt computer software company called DISSEMINATION. It offered educational programs to prepare survivalists/preppers for emergencies.

Although she didn’t meet his plane when he arrived back at DFW, the next day she invited him to her apartment for dinner. When he knocked on the door, he heard a rustling inside and then a movement behind the door. Who is it? she asked.

Forrest. Who else did you expect?

She opened the door. The little peephole distorts faces. I wasn’t sure it was you behind that beard. She was holding a small revolver and looking like a movie star in a tight-fitting white dress with her long, golden hair framing her pretty face. She had gained weight since he last saw her, making her look more voluptuous than anorexic.

Disregarding the revolver, he held out his arms for a hug and was disappointed when she drew back. He frowned and took the revolver from her hand. What kind of welcome is this? What’s with the weapon? He examined it closely and smelled the end of the barrel. It hadn’t been fired recently.

A woman was attacked in this apartment complex last month, so a friend gave that to me and showed me how to use it. You can put it there. With a trembling hand she indicated a small table beside the door, then kissed his cheek, and invited him to follow her into her luxurious split-level living room.

He looked with awe at the plush white carpet, the expensive furnishings and a beautiful view of Lake Worth from a large picture window. Wow! You must be making a huge salary to afford this palace. It was decorated mostly in white with blue accents. All the furniture was white and modern in design. The white carpet had random blue specks, and the valance on the window was blue. The wall opposite the window featured a blue and white abstract painting.

She spread her arms and said almost apologetically, This is a fringe benefit from my job. She took his hand and led him into a brightly illuminated dining room, where the table was set with white china and sterling silver dinnerware. In the middle was a large red bowl of Mexican design filled with chili con carne. On one side were smaller crystal bowls of tossed green salad and corn chips. On the other were matching bowls of shredded cheddar cheese and red salsa. He had hoped for candlelight and soft music with some serious intimacy after food and small talk.

Very nice, he said and squeezed her hand. She didn’t squeeze back.

What’s the deal, Elizabeth?

Forrest, we need to talk. Sit down and have a drink. She handed him a glass of red wine, which he set on the table.

With a sharp pang he realized she had been trying to jilt him for some time. Their emails, phone texts, and conversations had cooled while he was in the hospital, and he hadn’t wanted to face rejection at such a time and place. Thinking about her had helped him endure his pain.

He remained standing. You’ve found someone else. His tone was accusatory.

She was defensive. As a matter of fact, yes.

When did this happen? He slammed his fist so hard on the table that the wine in his glass sloshed onto the tablecloth.

Her eyes widened with surprise. She couldn’t remember seeing him this angry. She said nervously, It didn’t happen suddenly. It developed over the past few months. I didn’t want to tell you while you were in the hospital.

Thank God for small favors, he said, between clenched teeth, trying to stifle his growing rage.

I know you’re hurt, and I’m sorry—truly. Please try to see this from my side. After you left, I was really lonely, and Sean, my employer, is a wonderfully caring, charismatic person.

He leaned forward, staring into her eyes, and ground out angrily, He set you up in this apartment?

She said, Keep your voice down. I’m not going into the details of our relationship.

This was the girl that had refused to sleep with him for religious reasons. He seized her arm. You’re his mistress!

She shook loose. That’s a terribly unkind thing to say. She turned her back to him and said tearfully, The war has changed you!

Seeing her backside, he felt a great sense of frustration and loss. He had taken her for granted and had imagined they would make love and have some good times together before he gently let her down. He had the urge to force himself on her. Instead he took a deep breath. I guess you…deserve better. I’m damaged goods.

She turned and gave him a tentative smile. I don’t believe that, Forrest, and I really need your friendship and advice more than ever. Please, let’s eat dinner and talk the way we used to.

With a trembling voice he said, Excuse me. I’ve lost my appetite. Angry with himself for not being tough, he brushed tears from his face.

Elizabeth looked at her shoes and said, I understand.

I doubt that. He started for the door.

Please don’t go! I’ve got a serious problem, and I need to talk to someone I can trust.

Talk to your rich boss.

After he left her apartment, he drove wildly around the Fort Worth area in a rented Nissan Versa for several hours, until he fell asleep and ran head-on into a parked delivery truck on Belknap. He woke up in Harris Methodist Hospital with bruises and a concussion and no memory of who he was or what had happened to him. After three days he felt better physically but still had no memory of what had happened the past few days. His most recent memories were of getting shot in combat and receiving treatment at Walter Reed, where the prospect of being with Elizabeth again had helped him endure the depression that came with his physical pain and the painful separation from the war and his fellow soldiers.

Thanks to a month with a court-appointed psychologist, he was able to remember parts of his return to Fort Worth and his visit with Elizabeth. When his psychologist decided he had done all he could for him, the police took him to the Tarrant County jail while the grand jury decided to indict him. The case against him was compelling. The police found his phone number on Elizabeth’s list of recent calls. They also found love letters from him among books, papers, and other letters he or someone had scattered about her apartment. Worst of all, his fingerprints were on a wineglass and on the murder weapon, which a gardener found in a flowerbed beside the apartment building. In addition to those incriminating details a friend of Elizabeth’s in an apartment across the hall said she heard him shout at her not long before the shot was fired that killed her. Elizabeth had earlier confided in this friend that she intended to break her engagement that evening and was nervous about how her fiancé would respond. Forrest had only a vague memory of the entire encounter. He especially remembered his anger toward Elizabeth, his viewing her as an enemy, and his yelling at her. He couldn’t be sure he didn’t kill her. He had killed his enemies in Afghanistan. He remembered holding a weapon in front of her, and he felt guilty enough to have shot her. His psychologist said he had suffered dissociative amnesia as a result of PTSD, the car crash, and the horrendous crime he had committed.

Because of Forrest’s mental state his pro bono attorney argued that he had acted in the heat of passion, not with malice aforethought. Also because he was a decorated soldier, and because Elizabeth’s mother and sister agreed to it, the D.A. offered Forrest and his attorney a plea bargain. If he would plead guilty to a second-degree felony, he could get off with a 20-year sentence. If the case went to trial, the D.A. would seek a sentence of life imprisonment for first-degree murder based on the overwhelming evidence. He accepted the offer rather than go to court with his vague memory and a trial lawyer for whom his mother would have to take a second mortgage on her home and pay thousands of dollars.

He wasn’t in prison long before he was certain he hadn’t killed Elizabeth. Even so, he believed it was God’s will for him to be there, and he found the controlled environment healing for several reasons. He didn’t have to make any major decisions, all his physical necessities were provided for, and incarceration satisfied an emotional need to be punished. When he had been in the free world, he had lived mostly for himself and hadn’t developed a committed relationship with God. He hadn’t always loved his neighbor as himself, especially Elizabeth, whom he realized he had exploited. For that and other sins he had repented and now he felt closer to God than ever before. He talked with fellow prisoners that had found God since landing in prison. Most said they were glad they were in prison and were right with God. Otherwise they would have continued on a path leading to self-destruction and eternal punishment. Forrest was disappointed to learn that some abandoned God after their release from prison and their return to their former life and friends.

Forrest had plenty of time to read while in prison and was influenced by the works of three notable prisoners from the past whom he studied, using books sent to him by his sister. One was Henry David Thoreau, who in 1849 was imprisoned and consequently saw himself as a victim of a broken political system. While Forrest didn’t embrace Thoreau’s impractical concept of the ideal democracy expressed in Resistance to Civil Government, the essay convinced him that persons of courage must try to change the current political situations in Texas and in Washington. A second prisoner was the apostle Paul, who wrote some of his best work while he was in a Roman prison: Galatians, Philippians, Colossians, and Philemon. In Philemon he refers to himself as a prisoner of Jesus Christ, in Philippians he considers himself an ambassador in chains, and in Colossians, though in prison, he expresses a profound awareness of the immanence of Jesus in all the created universe. The third prisoner Forrest studied was Dietrich Bonhoeffer, who wrote letters from Tegel Prison in Germany during World War II. Prior to his execution by the Nazis he came to a fuller understanding of God as Lord over all things, not just the inexplicable. His steadfast faith became a great encouragement to the Confessing Church as well as to Christians of all denominations in later years. Seeing himself as a similar victim, Forrest identified with Thoreau, Paul, and Bonhoeffer and wrote long letters with political, philosophical, and theological observations to his sister, Lexie, who had stopped going to church after their father, who was only 48, was killed in an oilfield fire. She said church was no longer relevant. She remained a spiritual person, however, and said she found his prison letters encouraging and edifying. She planned to edit and publish them after his release.

After he prayed earnestly about the letter from Mary, it became clear to him that he would have to get out of prison. He asked God to show him a way of escape so he could protect Mary and at the same time prove his innocence.

CHAPTER TWO

BREAK Friday 1

E lizabeth Young had been Sean Ryan’s executive secretary and his mistress before she was murdered. With Forrest in Afghanistan she had fallen in love with him because of his magnetic personality and his striking appearance. Though he was only five feet seven and a half inches tall, he had a muscular physique with unusually broad shoulders and a trim waist. He also had a large head with a high forehead, a square jaw, and a dimpled chin. These features combined with his expressive blue eyes and wavy blond hair made him look more like a Hollywood action hero than the president of a multi-million dollar com pany.

His wealth had doubled in size since Elizabeth’s death, and he had become one of the most influential men in the Southwest, as evidenced by the presence of these people that had come from around the United States to receive his words of assurance regarding their future. Seated beside him in the plush maroon leather chairs in his DISSEMINATION conference room were his executive secretary, Sarah Lave (Elizabeth Young’s replacement), and his vice president and chief accountant, Abraham Bok. Seated in front of these three were a U. S. Senator, a Pentagon official, a CIA operative, an FBI special agent, a state police officer, an assistant district attorney, a bank president, an orthopedic surgeon, and a physicist. Also there were CEOs of telecommunication, computer, petroleum, grocery, pharmaceutical, and hardware corporations. Bok had carefully vetted all the attendees. Over the past two years they had expressed more than once in some public medium or to a trusted source a belief that the American people should prepare for an imminent catastrophic event or phenomenon. Each attendee had a blue folder containing information regarding a fortified commune with a citadel. Addressing this group was going to be Sean Ryan’s finest moment to date. They looked to him either for their earthly salvation or for extremely generous compensations for helping him attain his goals.

Sean had risen from humble origins to wealth and power because of what he considered his God-given ability to persuade people to do he wanted them to do. He had lived the first years of his life in Fort Worth, the only child of Arnold and Caroline Ryan. His mother was a part-time secretary at the Old Pioneer Baptist Church, and his father was the custodian. When Sean was 12, his father was electrocuted while changing a circuit breaker without disconnecting the power source. When he was 16, his mother died of breast cancer. Consequently, he spent the next two years of his life with his maternal grandfather, Anson Samuelson, on his 1,537-acre ranch in West Texas. Anson was a devout member of a conservative non-denominational church and occasionally spoke in tongues during worship services. A tough, though caring man, he helped Sean recover from his grief and encouraged him to become a minister.

After high school, Sean attended a church-related university in Oklahoma on a National Merit scholarship and majored in theology with an emphasis in missions. His grandfather provided him a new Dodge Ram pickup and a monthly allowance of $500. He and Sean planned for him to become a full-time evangelist. While living with his grandfather, he hadn’t watched TV or gone to dances and movies. His one extra-curricular activity was acting in his high school drama club productions. He spent most of his time away from school doing chores, working at his computer, exercising, and participating in church-sponsored activities. As it turned out, he wasn’t as committed to evangelism as was his grandfather, and at the university he began to enjoy a this-worldly social life, attending off-campus parties, dances, and pop music concerts.

During his junior year he developed a serious relationship with Jerri Parker, a petite, free-spirited sophomore from a wealthy Oklahoma City family. Despite her parents’ disapproval because of his lack of social status and post-graduation prospects, Sean and Jerri might eventually have married anyway—if she hadn’t drowned in the Gulf of Mexico while vacationing with Sean. They had gone there to get away from their parents and weather a crisis in their own relationship. Although there were no witnesses to her death besides Sean, and although the coroner ruled it accidental, her parents suspected Sean was somehow responsible for her drowning. Jerri had been depressed and often ill of late and had begun frequently to miss classes. To Sean’s relief the family did not want an autopsy. Because of her recent illness and weight gain, they feared the results would bring shame to the family name.

The following semester, without telling his grandfather, Sean changed his major to computer science and spent most of his waking hours studying. After graduation he worked in Silicone Valley for SanDisk Corporation. Five years later his grandfather died and left him his ranch. Sean sold it and started DISSIMINATION. It immediately became successful, at first developing software principally for Christian organizations and later, as his apocalyptic fears increased, providing software and material supplies to survivalists/preppers. By the time he was 35, he was worth over a billion dollars, he lived in a fine house with a swimming pool and a tennis court, he was married to a beautiful woman, and he had a son to keep his name alive. Like the Psalmist David he also had several adulterous relationships. One of them was Elizabeth Young, whose fiancé had confessed to murdering her.

When Ryan rose from his chair, his audience became silent. Ladies and gentlemen, we are assembled here because America as a free democracy is running out of money and time. Thanks primarily to our troubles in the Middle East we have a 17-plus trillion dollar debt that neither our children nor we can repay and there are terrorist groups that want to take over that part of the world as well as to infiltrate and destroy us. Half of our population is freeloaders, living off the taxes others pay or money the government borrows. Our wealthiest people are moving their money to banks and investments in other countries, while other countries are cashing in their investments here. Worst of all are Pentagon and CIA reports that other countries are hacking into our computer systems and may be shutting down our power grid and throwing our fragile monetary system into chaos at any moment. When that happens looters will be at our doors to rob and kill us for our food, water, and other resources. Each of you has a folder describing our elevated, fortified city with its citadel and water tower. We are calling it Mount Ararat after the mountain on which Noah’s ark, with its eight human survivors, landed after the flood. As you can see, it has everything the residents will need to survive whatever humans or nature can throw at us. There is an abundance of underground water, oil, and natural gas. If the water becomes polluted, we will soon have a facility that can purify it, no matter what the pollutant. We can also clean polluted air. Besides vegetable gardens and fruit trees to provide proper nutrition, there are facilities to store large quantities of food for years. At present we are completing a law-enforcement compound for our own militia and luxurious condominiums for those of you who want to reside there, as well as for other worthy applicants.

Are there many other applicants? asked the CEO of a major prescription drug outlet.

A lot more than we can accommodate, so we have had to raise our admission standards. What he didn’t tell them was he was